Legacy of Battle

Abadius 2nd and the group receives another mysterious note in gilded script telling them to follow Lieutenant Borlin Trell’s instruction and find something hidden wherever he would have them go. Moments later, Lieutenant Trell arrives at the The Goose and Feathers and requests a meeting with them. In it, he details that the stone quarry west of the village of Bav has been experience attacks from apparently elementals. The Kingsguard was sent it initially and thought the problem solved, but the creatures returned. He requests they travel to the quarry and find a resolution to the matter with haste.

While stopping in Rhem, a halfling child, Urch comes upon the group while being chased by a metal construct hound. After dispatching the hound, Tycho and Sammy go to the crafter’s workshop, Wilker, a local wizard and tinkerer. They find his body and a journal noting that he was working on something to protect and help the poor children in the town, though it apparently turned on him when animated for some reason.

While in route to Bav, the caravan is pulled to a halt due to a collapse in the road, seemingly the work of a tunnel burrowed too close to the surface. While investigating, an ankheg burst from the road near the trench and attacked. Gamecock was grabbed and pulled into the tunnel and down toward its lair. The group gave chase and eventually defeated the creature, but not before Gamecock had perished. Afterward, Sammy was inconsolable, unable to even find solace in his brothers.

During their evening in Bav, Tycho and Mariun say their goodbyes and she leaves him a token in the morning to remember her by. That night, Sammy skipped town in the night in search of a longshot effort to find a druid of greater power than himself. Days of searching the nearby Fisk Thicket turned up nothing and when too much time had passed, he sent a message to his brothers hoping to catch them in the village and let them know he would not be returning, instead setting out into the wilderness on his own.

Despite the abandonment from their brother, Tycho and Kraeg continue to the quarry to finish their assignment from Lieutenant Trell. At the quarry, they find the remains of the horse and men killed in the most recent attacks. While traveling the lowest tier of the quarry to the new marble vein, they are set upon by the elemental-esk mudmen they were warned about. Dispatched, they set to work on widening a hole into a chamber behind and within the marble vein. Sealed inside, they find another keystone, and the image of a dark skinned elf speaks in an old common dialect about the Sentinel Gate and his sons. After defeating the guardians of the chamber, they depart and begin the long journey home.

When within a couple days from Soren, they receive a visit from Aeron Masrin, the author of the myserious notes they’ve received. He tells them a long tale about a sorceress named Scylda Rast who he is a warden for and her near possession of Lithia Ambrose. It is her influence that drove Davren Ambrose to arrange for the robbery and poisoning they dealt with in Lyrus. Since, Scylda has taken possession of the first keystone that Reynold Dunwiddy located. With it, she has begun searching for the others and if able to reassemble and activate it, plans to take control of the Southern Kingdoms. Aeron requests their aid in stopping her. After a long discussion, they agree and he leaves them.

They arrive back in Soren a couple days later and Lieutenant Trell finds them shortly thereafter and rewards them for completing the job. That night, after soaking off the weeks of travel, the group gets a message from Captain Heen Feril of Lyrus asking them to return as soon as they can because their mother is missing.

At the suggestion by yet another gilded script note, the party seeks out Ranthel Boffin at his place of business, the Gilded Sparrow. They discover that Ranthel purchased what he thought were shocker lizard eggs and which turned out to be cockatrice eggs. While transporting them to the Magician’s College Of Lon, his wagon threw a wheel outside Tille and the creatures escaped. He asked the party to recover or kill the beasts as they had been attacking locals within the last couple weeks.

In route to Tille, the party is waylaid by a group of bandits posing as members of the King’s Guard. Once defeated, they locate the bodies of the actual guard in the shrubs nearby. Brought with them to Tille, the King’s Guard currently there take possession of the bodies and gear and thank the party for their aid. As it so happened, the bandits were being sought since their escape the week before. Lady Illewen Darkmoor pays the bounty to the party and provides some details about the recent attacks around Tille.

Heading in the direction the attacks are taking place in, the party happens upon a shepherd being chased by a couple cockatrices. Once dispatched, the boy, Ben, tells the placers about a nearby abandoned farmstead, Itran Fields. Following that lead, the group finds the remaining cockatrices had taken residence in the farmstead ruins. In the cellar, two petrified dwarves were found huddled in the back of the space, victims of the creatures.

Their return to Tille was heralded with a hero’s welcome. Dispatching the bandits menacing their people and ridding the town of the threat to themselves, their children, and their livestock. The return trip to Soren is uneventful and their meeting with Ranthel Boffin sees another job well paid and the acquisition of magicked rings.

A few days following Captain Feril’s return to Lyrus, the group entertains themselves and drinks of the celebration that is the Festival of Leaves while staying in Soren. After a couple days of recovery, a mysterious note, written in a golden ink appears beneath their door and reads, “The reach is long and the claws are sharp, but it is not the shell that hunts. In turn, extend reach and sharpen claws, until the one can be made two. Follow the flashing copper…” Shortly thereafter, Lieutenant Borlin Trell of the King’s Guard calls upon them at the The Goose and Feathers and offers them a job, all the while walking a copper piece across his knuckles, glinting in the morning sunlight. The job; seeking out the fate of two druid brothers who sought the answer for the disruption of wildlife within the Elden Forest. Renn Guidden is tasked by Borlin to act as their tracker and guide through the forest.

The journey takes them east and then northeast into the depths of the expansive Elden Forest. Following the faint tracks of the brothers, they travel deep into the forest and come upon the recent ruin of a squat tower structure. The remains of an excavation camp surround the base and have cleared a path through the rubble and revealed a spiral stair beneath the floor, descending into the earth. Several bloody tracks are found around the clearing and the group is set upon by monstrous centipedes and a spider.

Once within the rooms below, they find evidence of a once fine arcane workshop and residence, though the rooms look to have been torn apart in a rampage. More giant spiders and centipedes inhabit the now empty rooms. In one area of the ruin are chambers looking to have once held various animal/insect species in almost zoo-like settings. Larger rooms next to these clearly used for experimentation and dissection.

Following a hallway that looked half-finished, the party comes upon natural caverns and a narrow tunnel leading further into the stone. At the base of a tall cavern, they are ambushed at the lip of a refuse pit by a large cave troll, who blocks their exit. Fierce battle wears both sides until the troll is burned off the wall while it attempted to flee. The bodies of the brothers are discovered on top of the pit, while several more bodies, lie beneath, and below those, the remains of various animals.

Returning to Lieutenant Borlin Trell, they return the bodies of the druids to the city and are thanked and paid for their efforts.

The day after finding Spider’s body in his apartment, Captain Feril summons the party to the Hall of Justice to aid him in his interrogation of Davren Ambrose. Throughout, Davren is forthcoming and admits his involvement in the events of the last couple weeks, and seemingly, without remorse. He is placed under arrest and word is sent to the Hall of Courts in Soren for instructions on how to proceed. Lithia Ambrose, his wife, comes to the Hall of Justice to confront Captain Feril and to see her husband.

In route, during the middle of the night, they are ambushed by a small group demanding they turn over Davren. When refused, the one making the demand says, “She said you would say that. More for us.” After a close battle, two of the attackers are downed and the third disappears into the night. The rest of the twilight hours are spent on watch by all.

Neth the 14th witnessed a summons from Captain Feril by Guardsman Henricks to the Hall of Justice. The Captain recounts his findings regarding the mysteries around the Dunwiddy estate and that they were largely manufactured by the intruders, using the strange wooden cubes found in a few rooms. The surviving burglar, Tilly, has recovered and became more forthcoming in what she knows. She told the Captain that her contact in Lyrus works for Corin Turse and connected her and her brother to Spider. The Captain asks the adventurers to look into the Corin Turse connection and learn what they can from him about Spider.

Kraeg attempts to infiltrate Turse’s shipping house and organization by asking for a job as an enforcer. With two of Turse’s men, his right hand Briggs, orders them to pinch a local priest of Ryll for protection money, which they promptly do.

Tycho attempts to infiltrate the shipping house under the cover that he is seeking to hire Spider for a job. He discusses this with Briggs, but is unable to see Corin directly. When leaving, he slips into the warehouse proper and, while passing between isles to get closer to a ladder to the catwalk, he is spotted by men above him. A scuffle ensues and Tycho dives through Corin’s office window and then out another window to the street below, Briggs and the rest of Corin’s men right behind. Unfortunately, Tycho makes a hard landing and is rendered unconscious.

Sammy and Gamecock provide ample and unusual distraction in the form of religious zealots, priest and nun respectively, warning the workers and especially the guards around the Turse Shipping House, going so far as to ‘smite’ one of the naysayers with vengeful wrath of a most uncomfortable nature midst a flurry of carefully crafted flyers which spew forth from Sammy’s cloak.

Kraeg returns from his job in time to see Tycho crash through the outer window and hit the ground, rather unceremoniously. He rushes to him and when attempting to mislead the arriving guards, tips his hand to the already suspicious lot. Briggs arrives and engages Kraeg. Through a heated bout of traded blows, Kraeg is felled next to Tycho and they are taken inside the warehouse.

Sammy climbs the warehouse wall and after night falls, hangs down from the roof, smashes Corin’s bedroom window in, and as the man pokes his head out the ruined window to try to catch a glimpse of the person who broke it, Sammy pulls him through the window and down the two stories to the ground below, not 30’ from where Tycho lay earlier. Thrown on the back of Gamecock, Sammy runs off with his prize. In a nearby shed, he concocts a scheme to interrogate Corin, learn what he can of Spider and then exchange him for his brothers.

After their release and a short rest, a meeting with Captain Feril sends them to the Bee’s Bonnett with Guardsman Henricks. When let into the apartment above the bakery, they find Spider, dead, likely from poison, sitting at his table, next to a half finished note to Father Galdan about a woman named Melody and below it a hastily scrawled image of a runed stone, which Kraeg recognizes from an exploration ledger at the Dunwiddy estate, and the name ‘Ambrose’.

Returning again to Captain Feril, he is able to recover the ledger from the Dunwiddy estate and the entry Kraeg recalled with a sketch matching the one Spider left behind. It is a detail of an expedition returned earlier this year, some months ago. The drawing is of a stone shaped like an archway keystone, with small runes running the perimeter of the one face of the stone and a larger, central rune, accompanied by some descriptive text next to the rather careful illustration note it was found midst a well-sealed chamber deep beneath the ruins of a royal burial tomb. A sinkhole exposed the tomb and the chamber below. A small notation in a different hand on a slip of paper inserted in the ledger on that page reads simply, ‘Ambrose?’ A rough scale puts the stone at about 8” long. No other mention of the stone is made in the ledger.

Only a couple days following their wrap up of the Dunwiddy estate, Captain Feril once again summoned the party. He had received reports of stirge sightings and attacks on livestock at some of the western farms between Lyrus and the Western Lighthouse. Stirges are very rarely seen every few years and then only one or two, likely wandering far from their swampy homes in the western reaches of the Wildlands. The most recent sighting at Keldin farmstead a few days journey west and one of the northern most farms bordering the Derre.

After an uneventful few days west, they arrive at the Keldin farm mid-day to find it the site of a recent and horrible attack. Nort Keldin and his wife lay inside dead, next to a couple stirge bodies. Windows are broken in and looked to have occurred the night before during dinner. Found in the cellar trapped by the weight of her parents’ bodies, Tara Keldin is found and she relates the events of the night previous and where the stirges had attacked their livestock over the last week or so.

Following Tara’s directions north, they reach the starting cliff face of bordering the Derre and a small switchback in the rock face leading to a small inlet and cave entrance. A large log had become jammed in the entrance to the inlet. Inside, they find a small network of tunnels and caverns. The first brought them to a small swarm of stirges and a shallow pool where dozens of eggs lay in wait to hatch. After dispatching the stirges, they explore the cavern to find it served as a den for smugglers, who’s remains are also discovered. Victims of the stirges.

They return to Lyrus following another few days of peaceful and uneventful travel to report back to Captain Feril.

After vising with Oet Rillin at his shop on the edge of the Merchant District in Lyrus, they turn to investigate the Dunwiddy estate themselves. While searching the rooms throughout the wealth-clad building, they hear conversations of people they cannot find, footsteps down empty hallways, books flying off shelves in the library, and apparitions demanding they leave their house. Throughout the search, they find evidence that someone had been through some of the rooms as well and made an effort to cover it up. Several small wooden cubes are found in a few rooms with archaic runs carved into their surfaces.

While searching the rest of the house in the western wing, a great crash is heard from further back in the house. Rushing to the Dunwiddy’s antiquities room of Ixian artifacts, they find the large window there had been completely broken outward and snagged on a piece of glass was a small scroll case with the message “Use the help. It will go faster that way. Follow your nature when you have recovered my property, Spider,” and signed with a flourishing “A”.

Backtracking to Mr. Dunwiddy’s office nearby, they find his secreted door behind a tall mirror had been moved and set aside. The door at the bottom of the short stairwell still locked. Guardsman Henricks calls in a locksmith and once inside, they find an empty crate in the back of the vault and two bodies lying in pools of blood. The chests of coin remained behind, untouched. One of the bodies clung to life and she was taken out to be tended to.

With more questions pending than answers, they return to Captain Feril and tell him all that transpired. He collected the evidence and promised to follow up once the wounded woman recovered and to see if this known merc Spider, could be located.

Three orphans raised by a loving surrogate mother in the city of Lyrus, have begun down a path of adventure long dreamed about and eagerly sought. They have pursued different vocations but all roads have led them back to this dream. With the orphan brothers side-by-side, their eyes now rest toward horizons far and never seen.

This fall, in the month of Lamashan, brought with it disease which swept the city of Lyrus across all areas of the city and to the door of their own Ms. Fuss. With the help of Father Galdan at the Temple of Ryll and the city guard, it is discovered that the plague has been carried on the backs of an increased rat population. Descending into the winding, overlapping construction of the sewers beneath the city, Kraeg, Sammy, and Tycho join the efforts to cleanse the sewers of this overflow of rats.

As they reach deeper into the city sewers, they found another hand behind the larger population and in turn even larger rats. Whispers from their childhood of the fabled Rat-Man ring in their minds, as they happen upon the lair of a clearly warped and enraged mind. With messages found claiming vengeance upon the city above, they rush back to find the city evening turned out by swarms of rats pouring from shops, sewers, and homes alike, driving people to and from the streets.

After making their way into the heart of the South District, they find the leader of these rats and the inhabitant of the lair below. A horribly deformed man resembling in many ways the rats that follow him is directing the path of havoc through the city. They face him down and though evenly weighted, he is slain and with his death, the hold of the rats in the city is broken and they flee back to now poisoned and broken nests. A weary city guardsman Henricks thanks them for their aid.

After about a week and a half, the city recovers, as does Ms. Fuss. They are called upon by Captain Heen Feril and are thanked for their aid. He even goes so far as to recognize their willingness to help save the city, even if their motivations were personal. It is the result that matters to him. He leaves them with a purse of gold and a dedication to call on them in the future, if the need arises.